PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON The Imminent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Debacle. He seems less sanguine than Brad DeLong.

MORE BAD PRESS FOR CANADA: Taking away people’s kids for political speech. “Way to show your opposition to political oppressors, Canada.”

NOAH SHACHTMAN ROUNDS UP a bunch of parodies of Iranian photoshopping. At least half of these would probably make it past the photo editors at Reuters. . . .

ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY: Sent this arsenal of water guns to my brother — one for each member of the family, and cheap! — and got this email in reply: “Weeeee! Got the squirt guns today. They came in a box about the size of a sofa. Had a total blast squirting and being squirted by. Man, squirtgun technology has come a hundred miles since we were kids. ” Yeah, I’m jealous.

BRITISH TAX DOLLARS IN ACTION: Providing amusement for Guy Herbert.

DIRT BIKING ON AN ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE: “But the speed of the Zero X may not be as important to some as its silence. We can imagine a casual trail ride on a pair of these bikes where both riders can not only hear the sounds of the wilderness around them, but also carry on a conversation as they ride. Try that on a two-stroke.”

A JESSE JACKSON CONSPIRACY THEORY, from Stephen Green. Is Obama that smart? Is Jackson?

“FIND MORE, USE LESS:” Lamar Alexander on oil.

IN THE MAIL: Peter Navarro’s The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won. Video, and an author blog, at the link.

AT POWER LINE, Sen. John Cornyn on getting serious about energy.

BACHELORS: Menace to Society? Or its salvation?

BRAD DELONG ON FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC: “The chance that American taxpayers will actually lose any money if Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson decide that Fannie and Freddie need government support is very low.” But read the whole thing, though the Grover Norquist bit doesn’t add a lot of value.

UPDATE: Some further thoughts: (1) DeLong is very reassuring in general. (2) Why not vent at Norquist? What’s a blog for if not that kind of thing? (3) His talking points cover a lot more ground than you can get across on pretty much any TV show. While I’m no particular fan of Bill Donohue’s, I’m grateful for some green-room advice he gave me in 1991, just before I was on Larry King (he was on in the segment before, bashing strip clubs; I followed to talk about space law). His advice: Figure out one sentence that you really want to get across and just say it at some point whether it fits the interview or not, because that’s about all you can be sure of getting across. Alas, that was excellent advice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Gebert thinks I’m naive:

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac implode they will take a lot of well-connected Democratic party bigwigs down with them, and even do some damage to the candidate who just had to let Fannie Mae trough-feeder-in-chief Jim Johnson go from his inner circle, Barack Obama. Are we really surprised that Brad DeLong is out in front saying there’s no looming disaster and no scandal to be seen here?

DeLong often has good observations on economics, but he’s a loyal apparatchik for his party through and through.

Well, stay tuned.

FEDERAL REGULATORS TAKE OVER INDYMAC, and David Bernstein says “I told you so.”

UPDATE: Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal reports that federal bank regulators are blaming Sen. Charles Schumer for starting a run on the bank: “The director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, John Reich, blamed IndyMac’s failure on comments made in late June by Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), who sent a letter to the regulator raising concerns about the bank’s solvency. In the following 11 days, spooked depositors withdrew a total of $1.3 billion. Mr. Reich said Sen. Schumer gave the bank a ‘heart attack.'” (Via Canticle for Leibowitz, which reports that no other Senator has made such a letter public.)

Problems with the bank aren’t Schumer’s fault, of course, but publicity-seeking is a well-known Schumer flaw, and subjects like this call for a degree of discretion that he seems not to have demonstrated.

DAVID BRIN: How SETI has Taken a Worrisome Turn Into Dangerous Territory.

TONY SNOW has died.

OBAMA PLUMMETS IN NEWSWEEK POLL:

Last month, Newsweek’s poll surprised many by showing a huge gap between Barack Obama and John McCain, with the Democratic nominee-apparent enjoying a 15-point lead over the Republican. One month later, Obama has lost all of the momentum and has dropped into a virtual tie with McCain. The latest Newsweek poll shows Obama up 44-41, within the margin of error.

This is probably just evidence that the last poll had serious problems, but stay tuned — Obama’s fundraising is down, too, so I suppose it’s possible that he may be losing some of his gloss.

MARY KATHARINE HAM looks at a “hero.”

I HEAR THERE AIN’T NO CURE: It is the summer-time blues for both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain..

CHOOSING CORN OVER CONSERVATION: “This is yet another negative environmental consequence of the nation’s political romance with corn-based ethanol.” It’s not so much “romance” as prostitution. But yeah. We can make methanol — and, now, ethanol — from kudzu and garbage, and that would be a lot better than corn. I guess I need to start a kudzu-farmers’ lobby group. . . .

HARRY’S PLACE is being sued by legal jihadists. There’s an effort to support Harry’s Place underway here.

WELL, GOOD: Cancer Nanotech: Government Spending Done Right.

IT’S NATIONAL SLURPEE DAY. With free slurpees!

CROWDSOURCING the flu vaccine.

LOCKING UP SUPPORT from the crucial French philosopher bloc.